Comment by hahn-kev
2 days ago
Honestly, I feel like I'd be more suspicious of someone who had little to nothing installed on their phone.
2 days ago
Honestly, I feel like I'd be more suspicious of someone who had little to nothing installed on their phone.
A lot of people are still using their smartphone pretty much as a dumbphone with a web browser.
Yeah but if you're a normal guy strolling through every time with a phone that has nothing- no pictures, no signed in email, no history of messages, 4 contacts. That's abnormal, no way of spinning it as "but I just don't use my phone much" will make that seem normal. The average person has their phone glued to their body 24/7 now. Implying that you don't is abnormal.
"I only ever cross borders with a blank phone because I don’t want you invading my privacy" is a perfectly valid answer. You can also add that it is your employer’s policy and/or your government official recommendation.
19 replies →
"I got on pickpocketed on my last vacation, so now I travel with an old backup phone instead"
5 replies →
Like how many ?
Even more of a reason for good and easy backup and restore.
Before travel back up the real contents and restore a dummy travel backup with random games, stock photos etc. Then restore back to real contents.
This is never going to happen for the same reason Apple and Google won’t let you use different backup/restore methods.
I looked at snapseed a few hours ago and backup must be done per profile.
So you can totally have different profiles with different backup servers/credentials and decide to nuke one before flying or crossing a border.
Obviously you can't expect having 2 whatsapp or signal accounts on same number but you can always have several SIMs.
The good thing is with profiles you can totally seed a profile for a few weeks before travelling.
Sure but there'd be nothing there.
If the regime is going to just start taking people then nothing will stop that, but the goal is to stop the usefulness of this sort of thing as an intimidation measure - or at least drag it to the forefront and overthrow the regime.
The easiest way to avoid suspicion is to have a phone filled with cat and family pictures, dumb apps and games.
You don't avoid scrutiny by being wierd and hiding things, but by hiding in plain sight by being ultra boring.
The easiest way to avoid suspicion is to have a phone filled with cat and family pictures, dumb apps and games.
Presumably they know quite a lot about you already outside your phone (yay, Palantir). I mean, the guy the recent post was about was an activist. An empty phone vs. a phone with just cat pictures and dumb games wouldn't really make a difference. They went on a fishing expedition, so anything that does not have contact information/messages of other activists or any information that they could use against the phone owner would be a win.
(F-you Palantir for reading this message and adding it to my online record.)
> (F-you Palantir for reading this message and adding it to my online record.)
Hello Palantir. I orchestrated 9/11. Please come and arrest me.
On the other hand, if everything about you is boring, that in itself may begin to seem suspicious. "I borrowed this old phone from my stepson because my own phone got run over by a steamroller at a vintage vehicle show" is the sort of thing an actual spy or criminal would never say.
Add some dickpicks because who doesn't have something on their phone that they don't want others to see.
Multiple decoy accounts, heh. First one: cat pics. Second one: dick pics. Third one: conversations with an imaginary mistress. Fourth one: porn that's illegal in Korea. Fifth one: ....
completely impractical obviously